Physical Geography Technology Enhancements and Distance Learning February 19, 2010 Donald Thieme

GEOG 1113K one of two introductory courses in Physical Geography GEOG Weather and Climate GEOG Introduction to Landforms can be taken as a sequence to satisfy laboratory science requirement for education and other majors

Testing and Grading 3 Exams (100 points) Final Exam (200 points) Videos (10 points each) Attendance (25 possible points) Lab Exercises (10 points each) Lab Mid-Term Lab Final

Practice Tests multiple choice questions test banks provided by textbook publisher, Pearson Prentice Hall Fall, 2007 and Fall, a "Java" script provided by Pearson Prentice Hall, accessed through WebCT online Fall, test bank imported into BlazeView, Valdosta State University's implementation of BlackBoard Vista 8. Accessed as an "Assessment"

Practice Tests "Java" script accessed through WebCT online Students had to turn off pop-up blocker, install new JAVA, etc.... JAVA script would crash and leave students half finished - - > Could not be timed. Students made mistakes on Name, Course ID, etc > Allowed multiple trials. Nearly 90% answered over 90% of questions correctly. How many got "help"? ?

Practice Test BlazeView "Assessment" Students failed to read instructions and reported some of the same problems as in 2007 and 2008, Test was timed initially, later opened for multiple tries. Only 21% answered over 90% of questions correctly. Still poor correlation with Exam 2 grades. Many students still not learning from this practice.

Google Earth Latitude and Longitude Coordinates short enough to be easily copied accurate enough to find the landform Geographic Locations general enough to be familiar specific enough to be physically unique 3-4 Questions at least one process question all sets similar in difficulty "Capstone" Experience in that it combines all blocks of study into one exercise